


you're the one i've been living for

by owilde



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Romance, Slice of Life, Slow Dancing, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 03:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14440821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owilde/pseuds/owilde
Summary: “Anything by the borders today?”“Nah.” Ryan doesn’t sound on edge, so Shane believes him. “Someone’s been there, though. Not recently, maybe last week or something. Guess they didn’t want to pop in to say hi.”“Rude,” Shane comments.





	you're the one i've been living for

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know, i felt like slow dancing with some plot, which turned out to be post-apocalypse *shrugs*
> 
> title from Ten Sharp's "You"

It’s a cold night out, so they have to put the fire on.

At least, that’s what Shane tells himself. It’s cold outside, and their insulation is non-existent, so it feels like a foregone conclusion – but as he’s setting the logs up and searching for matches, he thinks maybe he’s just a bit too transparent for this.

Shane’s never been a good liar, that’s the thing. Not even as a child, when everyone learned to tell sweet little white lies to get out of problems. Not Shane. He’d stammer and blush his way through a bullshit explanation, signalling to a mile away that yes, he was lying, and yes, he was bad at it, and yes, he was going under house arrest for that.

Something prickles his fingers; a splinter from a log. Shane glances at the tip of his index finger, where there’s a small droplet of blood. He wipes it on his jeans and lights the fireplace up, stepping away from the flames as they rise up against the tiled chimney.

There are sounds behind him, a quiet stirring. Shane turns around to find Ryan stretching his arms on the couch, eyes squinted towards Shane. The blanket Shane had put on him earlier is pooling around his waist, half of it on the floor.

“Shane?” He mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He yawns. “Did you put the fire on?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “It’s cold,” he adds.

Ryan frowns, which looks endearing but means he’s about to call Shane out on his bullshit.

But then he doesn’t.

“Okay,” Ryan says instead. He sits up. “Tea?”

“I’ll put the water on,” Shane says.

As he’s putting water in the pot, Shane smiles to himself, for a moment. This wasn’t the life he’d been expecting, but now that he has it, it’s kind of nice. More than kind of. Very nice. This is a life, he thinks, he wouldn’t give up for most things, if anything at all.

Though he might be persuaded to other sorts of lives, if they included Ryan.

They sit on the living room floor, near the fireplace, with their tea cups balanced on their knees. The flames are crackling quietly. The left side of Ryan’s face is glowing in soft orange hues. The colour moves along with the dancing of the flames, sometimes dipping across Ryan’s nose, touching his forehead, caressing his lips.

Shane sips his tea, and glances out the only window that isn’t permanently boarded up. “Anything by the borders today?”

“Nah.” Ryan doesn’t sound on edge, so Shane believes him. “Someone’s been there, though. Not recently, maybe last week or something. Guess they didn’t want to pop in to say hi.”

“Rude,” Shane comments.

Ryan laughs. “Yeah, I’d say. Might not have been human, though. Maybe a deer or something.”

“Or something,” Shane repeats weakly. “Yeah, sure, a deer or something. That’s plausible.”

Ryan shrugs, staring into his tea cup with a small smile. “You’re the one who said you were tired of my bullshit theories on what it could be,” he says. “I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if something funky evolved in the absence of people. Or from people. Never know.”

“Yeah, there’s a mothman walking around our perimeter. Maybe we should put a sign out there, invite people over. Then we’d know for sure.”

Ryan’s eyes flickered up. “Or,” he started hesitantly, “we could trek to the city. See what’s what.”

Shane pursed his lips. “Or we could stay here and not die.”

“We’ll die, regardless,” Ryan argues. He knows his lines well; they’ve rehearsed this play many times over. “At least we’d go out with a blast.”

“I’m not risking…” _You_ , Shane thinks, but Ryan knows that. “I’m not risking what we have now for a stupid suicide mission.”

Ryan shrugs, not too rattled. “I’ll wear you down eventually.”

He’s right, of course. He will. Because even Shane knows that the older they get, the more difficult it’ll be to uphold their life as it is. Old bodies don’t hunt well. Old bodies don’t chop logs. Old bodies creak and turn weak, and when that happens, when time catches up with them, or maybe even some time before that, they’ll go.

They haven’t left their small cabin and the surrounding area they claimed as their own in years. Shane’s not certain just how many, exactly. Ryan tried keeping a calendar, in the beginning, but then they skipped a day, and then another, and eventually, time lost its meaning.

It must be more than ten years, by now. Or maybe it just feels longer.

The city has to look horrendous, by now. If not destroyed by the looting of the early days, then certainly by the decay of time, territorial conflicts, gang wars, forces of nature. They don’t know if there are still people there, or if they’ve become something else.

The virus made one big mess of things, and no one stepped up to try and fix it. Shane can’t judge them; he doesn’t think there was anything to be done, after everything went wrong. There’s no point in fixing something so far gone.

There’s a heavy gust of wind that rattles the cabin walls. Shane and Ryan tense out of reflex, and their shoulders slump again only when the wind settles down and nothing shows up behind the window.

Ryan drinks the rest of his tea and takes both their cups to the kitchen. When he comes back, Shane’s stood up as well.

“You have that look,” Ryan says slowly. “What is it? I know we’re out of basically everything, but we can’t go out tonight. It’s too dark.”

Shane shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he says. “I was just thinking. Would you…” He pauses, licks his lips. “Do you want to dance?”

Ryan frowns out of confusion. “Dance?”

“I know that we have no music,” Shane hurries to say, “and that everything is shit and we’re going to die sooner or later, but. But I miss doing normal things. We don’t do enough of those. What’s the point of surviving if we do nothing about it?”

There’s a brief silence as the flames continue crackling in the background. “Okay,” Ryan says. His frown melts into a smile. “You know what, yeah. You’re right. What’s the fucking point, if we do nothing?”

He takes the three extra steps he needs to reach Shane. They work in synchrony born out of intimate familiarity with each other and their tics; Ryan reaches to put his hands on Shane’s shoulder, as Shane’s fingers curl around his waist.

“Do I need to hum?” Shane asks as they begin to slowly sway from one foot to another in something that barely mimics dancing. “I don’t remember that many songs, at least nothing romantic.”

“You,” Ryan says.

“Me?”

“No, the song, You. By Ten Sharp.”

Shane racks his brains, and comes up empty. “Hum it for me?”

Ryan does. The tune is faster than Shane expected, and vaguely familiar. Ryan’s voice is low and comforting, and when he starts hesitantly singing the words, as well, Shane pulls him closer.

Ryan finishes the song, half humming and half singing the bits he can remember, and silence falls.

“Wait,” Shane says after a while. They continue swaying on their feet in a small circle. “Is that the one that played at the bar when we met?”

Ryan’s face breaks into a grin. “You did remember,” he says. “Yeah, it is. Nineties night, remember? Britney Spears played after that one.”

“You drive me crazy,” Shane recalls. “I had too much liquor that night. I would’ve asked you to come home with me, otherwise.”

“You would’ve?” Ryan sounds genuinely surprised. “You never told me that.”

Shane shrugs a little. “Guess it hasn’t come up. But yeah, I would’ve. Bugged me out for months that I didn’t. But then, of course, you did the job for me.”

Ryan huffs. “As per usual.”

Shane smiles. “Don’t get smart with me.”

“You always did say you love my intellect,” Ryan retorts, grinning.

They slow down. Ryan presses his head against Shane’s chest.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” He asks, his voice muffled. “All this.”

“No,” Shane agrees. He holds Ryan a little closer in the warmth of the fireplace. “No, it’s not so bad at all.”


End file.
